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The Early Start Screen Smart Program

Supporting families to create healthy screen time habits

The Early Start Screen Smart Program was developed with parents, for parents and backed by research.

This program was designed for parents and caregivers with a 0–3-year-old to support their child’s screen time and create healthy screen time habits within their family.

What is the Early Start Screen Smart Program?

The Early Start Screen Smart program supports parents and caregivers how to create healthy screen time habits with their infants and toddlers through evidence-based strategies and information. The program has been developed in partnership with parents of young children and early childhood professionals to ensure it meets the current needs of families.

Key Messages of the Program

  • Technology and screens are a part of our everyday life.
  • This program is not here to tell parents exactly how much screen time their child should be watching
  • Every family is different, each parents knows family and child best
  • This program focuses on healthy screen time, allowing families to choose what tips will work best for them.
  • This program brings together the latest evidence and realistic strategies to ease parent guilt and judgement, and provide a supportive environment to discuss the challenges of screen time
  • The program was co-designed with Australian parents and early childhood professionals.

Meet the research team

We are a team of researchers at The Kids Research Institute, Australia, who are passionate about ensuring children get the best start in life.

Screens are becoming an ever-increasing part of our every-day lives and we hear over and over again from parents that they are at a loss for how to deal this challenge.

We want to change that.

This body of work is led by Dr Mary Brushe who is a public health researcher focused on better understanding early screen use and identifying ways to best support families to create healthy screen time habits. Mary has spoken on the topic of screen time to several media outlets including ABC News, The Project, New York Times and The Guardian.

Feel free to reach out to Mary directly with any enquiries about the project or screen time in early childhood more broadly: mary.brushe@thekids.org.au

This project would not be possible without the support of a dedicated research team who has worked on different components of the Early Start Screen Smart since it began in 2022. These researchers have included: A/Prof Amy Finlay-Jones, Gabriella Wells, Rebecca Young, Jamelle Walton, Zara Boulton, Sara Coombs, Eleanor Ferguson, Prof Sheena Reilly, Prof Gina Trapp, Prof Edward Melhuish, Prof John Lynch and Prof Sally Brinkman.

Acknowledgements

This program was made possible through generous funding from the Channel 7 Telethon Trust. We would also like to acknowledge our the parents who participated in our co-design workshops and the community partners who have worked closely with us throughout each stage of the project: Parenting Connections WA, Meerilinga, Communicare WA, Ngala, and Midvale Hub Parenting Service Perth North East.